Page 13 of I'm Not Your Pet

This could be a mistake, but it didn’t feel like it.

Maybe I could make him happy.

At the very least I could free him and give him a choice. His proposal didn’t have to mean anything unless he wanted it to. The ball could be in his court.

Hope fluttered inside my belly as I pictured what my life could become. A small warm body to curl around. Those dull flat teeth twisted into a happy smile as I pampered and spoiled my huu-man to the point he forgot all about the injustices that had been inflicted upon him. The way he’d feel in my arms as I sunk inside his body, soaking up his pleasure like a sponge.

Tomorrow I would make good on my promise to him.

I would make things okay.

It was the right thing to do.

At least…I hoped it was.

In case you’re wondering, I did not get the donuts I’d wanted. Ididsomehow manage to gain a new owner, though. Not that I knew that right away, as I woke up the next morning expecting the worst. I’d slept fitfully, tossing and turning as my inevitable fate taunted me even when I was unconscious.

The world had a funny way of flipping itself upside down when I least expected it.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I didn’t know where I stood. Didn’t know what the shark-dude had said, or what was going to happen to me. And I dreaded the meeting I’d no doubt have with The Manager later, and the red, red doors that even now taunted me from the safety of my sleep pod.

I expected the worst.

So imagine my surprise when my alarm went off like usual long after I’d been awake—and nothing seemed amiss.

As I walked down the hallway toward breakfast with the others, everyone kept congratulating me. That should’ve clued me into the fact that something was off. But I was too relieved not to see The Manager to think anything of it.

When I returned to my room after I’d finished eating, it had been emptied of all the belongings I’d managed to collect over my three years on F’ukYuu. Staring at the barren space, my heart began to race.

This is it.

You shouldn’t have let your guard down.

You expected this.

“6934,” The Manager’s nasally voice crackled from behind as he addressed me by the number I’d been assigned. I whipped around, the pit in my stomach growing heavier by the second.

Just breathe.

Just breathe, Hugo.

You can survive anything if you just breathe.

The Manager was waiting in the doorway, his robes dragging on the floor. He held a tentacle out, the slick appendage brushing my bare chest as his eyes narrowed, and I immediately began to tremble.

Maybe they’d taken all my stuff because they were going to give my pod to someone else? Maybe I’d fucked up so bad last night, blubbering all over the VIP guest that they’d decided I wasn’t worth the trouble of keeping?

Before I could further spiral, clothes were shoved into my arms and I stared down at them in shock, confused and more than a little worried. The Manager’s tentacles retreated as quickly as they’d come, but the slick substance they’d left behind made my skin crawl.

“Get dressed,” The Manager said in garbled English. He pointed behind him toward the communal bathroom that those of us in our shared wing used. I stumbled a little when he poked me with his tentacle again to get me moving, but promptly did as I was told.

If I wasalreadyin trouble, I refused to get intomoretrouble just because I wasn’t fast enough.

Twenty minutes later, dressed in more clothing than I’d worn in years, I was escorted by a handful of enforcers into the elevator and down the hundred or so floors to The Manager’s office. I felt more naked in the thigh-length tunic and black leggings than I had when I was in my usual uniform.

This was unfamiliar.

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